


Cracked Glasses

by anaturalintrovert



Series: Ni No Kuni Fics [4]
Category: Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Platonic Relationships, Sad and Sweet, Short & Sweet, Whump, the one where phillip lost his ambition but with more angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-22
Updated: 2020-09-22
Packaged: 2021-03-07 16:27:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 994
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26600638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anaturalintrovert/pseuds/anaturalintrovert
Summary: Phillip hasn’t seen Oliver for a good while. Oliver finally gets around to visiting his old friend. Phil’s been having an awful month.
Relationships: Mark | Phillip & Oliver (Ni No Kuni)
Series: Ni No Kuni Fics [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1899427
Comments: 3
Kudos: 15





	Cracked Glasses

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this entirely off the cuff and mostly based it on the fact that Phil was just standing outside of his house when Oliver found him in game and, I don’t know, it just didn’t sit right with me. Also characterising Phil is fun. Enjoy!

Phil was very off.

There wasn’t a specific moment where he could pinpoint this so-called “off-ness” but it didn’t matter. Something was wrong with him. For about a week or so now, but time was a thing of the past.

He had stopped going to school. He stopped going because his year group was mean to him. Called him a nerd. Spat gum at him. Laughed. The works. Oliver assumed that Phil was the cool kid in the year above him. No. He was, by every definition of the word, a loser.

Oliver wasn’t around anymore. Phil was worried sick. Literally sick, crying over his toilet throwing up levels of sick. First Oliver’s mother - his sweet, kind, accepting mother who always let him come round for dinner or build snowmen in the road with her son or walk him to school or build stupid deadly cars - and now Oliver. Oliver wouldn’t do anything rash. He wouldn’t run away or do something worse than running away. Would he?

Phil had it bad, sometimes. A lot of the time, actually. His dad didn’t much care for his automobile-oriented hobbies. His mother sort of drifted in and out of his family life. Oliver was like a brother to him. Alicia was like his mother. Even before all of this happened, all of the pain, he had bad days. Really bad days. Sometimes getting up to see Ollie and build his cars was his only reason to leave his bed.

He didn’t want to build cars anymore. He didn’t want to hurt anybody ever again. He’d killed a mother who was too good of a person to die. He hurt her son, maybe even killed him.

Phil was in bed, staring out of his window at the birds that could forget to fly and fall to their deaths. The clouds felt like ice pushing down on the world. The pressure hurt. He was done being sick and vomiting. He wasn’t even mentally present. He was somewhere else entirely. He sat up so he could drink some water because damn, his throat was killing. His glass was half empty but his ankle still hurt quite a bit so he wasn’t about to walk and get some more. No point. No point in anything anymore.

He felt kind of dizzy upon sitting up. He used his pillow for support, and you could see where the tears were drying on the fabric.

He could see down to the road from his window, given his new position. He saw a red cape drift in the wind. An auburn-haired boy walking down the street. He looked excited. Happy. Phil almost didn’t recognise him because he hadn’t seen Oliver in a week. The last he saw of the boy... God, that sight had hurt. He’d never seen Oliver cry so hard before. Oliver cried a lot. He was a bit of a cry-baby, as much as the kid would deny it. Oliver’s regular tears were often just bouts of temporary stress relief. They were usually easy to get under control. But seeing Oliver after his mother had died...

Phil missed his friend.

He couldn’t bring himself to get off of his bed. He lay down again. The doorbell rang. His dad answered it. Footsteps up the stairs.

A knock on his closed bedroom door. “Phil! It’s been forever!”

“What do you want?”

Phil was turned over in such a way that his back was towards Oliver, who was now opening the door and entering what had become his uninspired prison. He was almost laying in a foetal position.

Oliver approached and shook his shoulder. “It’s me! I’m back! And I need your help.”

“What could I help you with? Killing someone? Did someone get on your nerves?”

Oliver paused to process. He laughed nervously. “Phil?”

“Just leave.” Phil could have cried with joy that Oliver was, in fact, alive, albeit dressed rather strangely. He was crying with joy but he couldn’t motivate himself to face his friend. “I can’t— I can’t deal with this.”

Oliver tried to shake his friend’s shoulder again. He felt Phil shudder with pain as he sobbed. “Phil? Phil, is this about—?”

“Of course it’s about your mom! Of course it is!”

Oliver stepped back and looked to his invisible friends. Phil glared over his shoulder and saw a confused boy looking around his friend’s room. The car models. The blueprints on the wall. Their picture which Alicia had taken and printed for them. They were so young. Smiling. Phil still had his old glasses as a keepsake and Oliver still had that messy stupid endearing haircut. The glasses were all cracked from the two boy’s mishaps over the years. All of the fun quirky things they experienced together. No mistake had ever been so grave as letting Oliver get in that stupid hunk of junk car he’d spent his terribly short life on.

“It’s my fault she died!” Phillip yelled. “It’s my fault that you’re miserable. I’m not ruining anyone elses’ lives! I’m not! I refuse!”

“Phil, you didn’t—“

“Just go! I don’t want to do this anymore! I can’t!” Phil finally stood up and faced his friend. He didn’t mean to hit his shoulder. To punch his friend. But he did. He flinched as he saw Oliver stumble backward. He could have sworn he’d heard alarmed voices. Phil stepped back, then directed his anger at himself. “Dammit!” He tore down the blueprints from his wall until they were in shreds in his hands. He fell to his knees and cried, his head hung low, his hands in his hair. His glasses were askew and the paper had given him slight cuts on his hands.

The nightmare was quick to emerge from Oliver’s friend. And Oliver was still hesitant to face it because he was still weak, so incredibly weak.

But he had to help his friend.

He had to try.

And he’d succeed against it, they’d all see.


End file.
